A deep discussion with two senior OnLive engineers and managers talking about iOS versions coming soon and what the pricing is among other interesting things. Tune in and listen to the new special podcast hosted by Drax with Jo.

Firestorm have started to block old Firestorm versions this week one by one which will continue for the rest of the week until completed by the Firestorm Team. See the latest block updates below and be prepared to upgrade to the latest version of Firestorm.

The Firestorm team have recently been under pressure from Linden Lab to block older versions and its been in the works for many weeks now. The blocking is needed so that the Firestorm Team can continue to develop Firestorm futher so that everyone has a better inworld experience. By the end of November the Firestorm team will only allow the latest three versions of the Firestorm to access Second Life which makes sense.

See all of your conversations and everyone in those conversations, using an inventory-like UI

Quickly move your voice connection between conversations and effortlessly adjust individual volume or overall volume in a single click

View all of your recent communications in one window (Conversation Log)

See what was said in any conversation (Conversation Transcripts)

Set Do Not Disturb to focus on other things and get all the communications (and inventory offers!) you missed, after you come back

Choose from four levels of notification for each of five different kinds of incoming communication. You can set IMs from friends and IMs from non-friends to different levels of notification

Turn sound on and off for four different events, such as inventory offers and teleport offers

Access voice morphs more easily

Get to chat preferences and privacy preferences directly from the Conversations window.

Type your chats into an expanding, multiple-line box

Select multiple users across different conversations and start a new conference with them

Choose which conversations are in their own windows, and which should be in a tabbed window — you can have both now.

Collapse any conversation to a single-line input with popup messages.

See users and objects you have blocked in a new tab in the People window.

What is CHUI?

As we’ve previously blogged about, CHUI puts Second Life’s communications tools in a more flexible UI that lets you customize it for the ways you prefer to communicate inworld. You can even turn it all off when you want to build, make movies, or simply be left alone for a while.

Watch the NEW VIDEO below about the new (CHUI) by Torley Linden.

What do you think about the new Communications Hub User Interface (CHUI) in the Second Life viewer ?

The big news this weekend announced by Jessica Lyon during a recent Phoenix office hour with the SL community is that the Phoenix Viewer support will be ending on Monday 31st December 2012. Apparently the Phoenix Viewer will then be removed from the SL third-party directory and Phoenix links will be removed from the Phoenix Official Blog. In 2013 Firestorm Viewer will be the default popular third party viewer and more new developments will continue to happen.

The reason for why Phoenix Viewer support will be ending is because Linden Lab will be rolling out server-side avatar baking in 2013 which should be interesting. TPVs have been told about this 2013 avatar baking roll out and hopefully the deployment will go without any major issues.

It seems like the server side baking rollout is at it’s final stages now with a timeline of 8 weeks according to Oz Linden via the Open Source Mailing List recently.

Oz Linden (Scott Lawrence)

to opensource-dev

For any of you developing viewers that are not in the TPV Directory andso didn’t get the notice there….

We have now made available the code for our upcoming server side bakingchanges – you will need to update to be compatible with this in orderfor users to see avatars correctly once the server side change is rolledout to the main grid (some time > 8 weeks from now, but no date has beenset yet).

As Oz said in the meeting, the clock is now ticking. We asked for at least two months’ notice, and yesterday we got that. LL would like to roll the code out to the grid in February, but they’ll work with TPV developers to make sure we all have had the code and a good chance to implement it before they actually roll it out.

History of the Phoenix Viewer

Transition from Emerald controversy to Phoenix in September 2010

Phoenix Viewer added to The Third-Party Viewer Directory list in September 2010

Phoenix Viewer Beta 2 in July 2011

40 groups enabled on Phoenix Viewer in January 2011

Phoenix Project turned one years old in September 2011

Phoenix Viewer Beta 2 with Mesh Support in September 2011

Phoenix classes started in 2011

New changes to TPV policy & Phoenix TPV policy meeting in late February 2012

Phoenix Viewer support ends 31st December 2012

What do you think about this major announcement and will you be switching to Firestorm if not already?

On Tuesday 4th September 2012 Oz Linden on the behalf of Linden Lab said that Firestorm viewer has taken over the number one spot on the list of Second Life viewers. Firestorm users are spending longer time in the viewer (total user time) and even more than the previous Phoenix viewer. Firestorm is now the most stable viewer and popular viewer in Second Life.

Happy 2nd Anniversary Firestorm!

It’s nice that Linden Lab have noticed this happening and I would like to say congratulations to the Firestorm Viewer team for being the number 1 viewer in Second Life today and for making SL a better place. I hope there will be a list of viewers usage stats somewhere public because that would be interesting. This email below was sent via the opensource-dev mailing list. There are more details on the Official Phoenix Firestorm Blog post by Jessica Lyon.

On behalf of Linden Lab, I’d like to extend congratulations to the Firestorm Viewer team.

Last week, Firestorm took over the #1 spot on the list of Second Life viewers in terms of total user time, surpassing its elder cousin, Phoenix. The Phoenix viewer still has a slight lead in number of sessions, but Firestorm viewer sessions are on average significantly longer – which may in turn be due in part to its substantially better stability.

The Firestorm team has worked long and hard to support users who want both the latest Second Life features being developed by Linden Lab and the additional capabilities you provide, and this achievement is one you can all be proud of. Thank you.

Awesome news and this is a fantastic achievement for the Firestorm team.

The Zen Viewer is a v3 viewer based on the viewer-development Snowstorm. It contains all the latest shines and fixes plus a consolidation of unique features specific to content creation. Includes the original Pie Menu!

Mesh – The rollout and launch of Mesh was the most talked during 2011. Mesh went live across the grid on 23rd August 2011.

Meeroos – Meeroos attack from unidentified griefers which caused alot of controversy and anger from the SL community.

RedZone- This was big news when RedZone HUD revealed alt accounts, zf Redzone security was breached and the ban of zFire Xue from Second Life.

Viewer 3 – Launched on 8th November – this was a major revamp of the user interface. V3 came with customizable toolbars, buttons, no sidebar and merger of Basic and Advanced modes.

42 groups limit - This was really good news when the lab officially raised the group limit from 25 to 42 in January 2011.

Teen Grid merger- There’s been plenty of mixed views from the SL community about this during Q4 2010 and Q1 2011. Linden Lab merged the grids on 21st January 2011.

Bring Back Last Name Options – Linden Lab removed last names and there has been buzz about bringing back last names since July 2011. Linden Lab are still reviewing this JIRA.

Google+ & Facebook- During the first half of the year there were reports of SL avatar accounts being suspended and deleted.

SLCC 2011 - The first conference where Rod Humble attended & again SLCC was full of announcements/updates.

SL closures – ElvenMyst, Abbots Aerodrome, AM Radio sims were just some places that announced closure during 2011.

50% Premium membership – In the last few months Linden Lab announced that residents could save 50% on premium membership when they sign up (limited time offers). In September 2011 Linden Lab introduced new premium benefits to the SL community.

Linden Lab communications – At the start of the year office hours were turned into user group meetings but there are fewer now than the start of the year. Linden Lab used Facebook, Twitter, Plurk and JIRA more frequently this year to communicate with the SL community. Since January there have been monthly posts on the SL blog from the lab.

It’s amazing to think what has actually happened in 2011 as the year draws to a close. There have been many negatives and positives in Second Life this year and it’s going to be interesting to see what 2012 will bring us all. I hope you like my 2011 list of the most talked about news stories so far. :)